Shared Concepts in Arts and Literature

In this paper, I argue for the usefulness of the historical study of concepts for the understanding of relations between the arts and between the different disciplines of arts research. Discussion on concepts often focuses on precision: by careful definition and delimitation we make concepts into functional “tools” that are the result of a linear, teleological formation. Such streamlining often obscures from view the multiple, fragmentary origins of concepts and their transfer across disciplinary borders. Yet it is particularly the ambiguity and discursivity of concepts that renders them their cultural and critical relevance. Taking as an example the concept of burlesque, I demonstrate the role of concepts as sites of debate that retain their edge even when they become adapted to new contexts. The case of burlesque shows how interdisciplinarity begins “at home”: much of the critical vocabulary that literary studies uses is not its own but shared with and shaped by other arts and disciplines.